Loneliness permeates Adam Ekberg’s whimsical photographs that document the climax of orchestrated events. While the camera freezes them into still lifes, a sense of continuity—like the arc of a story—happens as one realizes that Ekberg (American, b. 1975) invented, manifested, documented, and concluded these events. The objects take on lives of their own, even though we know that such agency is impossible.

In Southern Rites, Gillian Laub engages her skills as a photographer, filmmaker, and visual activist to examine the realities of racism and raise questions that are simultaneously painful and essential to understanding the American consciousness.